(b 1163; d 27 Jan 1225). French chronicler of St Martial of Limoges and monk. Received as a boy scholar at St Martial in 1177, Itier held a succession of important offices, culminating in appointments as librarian (1204) and precentor (by 1211), posts he evidently held concurrently. Annotations in Itier's hand, scattered through surviving remnants of the St Martial library, testify to his interest in preserving the monastery books. One manuscript that he had bound includes a collection of early polyphonic music. Other musical manuscripts from the St Martial collection very probably owe their survival to his care.
Although not himself a professional scribe, Itier had charge of the monastery scriptorium and knew how to notate music. One composition in his hand, a Parisian motet based on the duplum of Perotinus's four-voice organum Sederunt (F-Pn lat.2208 f.1), shows a musical connection between Paris and St Martial in Itier’s lifetime. The chronicle written by Itier is a central source of information on the monastery.
H. Duplès-Agier: Chroniques de Saint-Martial de Limoges (Paris, 1874)
M.-T. d’Alverny: ‘L'écriture de Bernard Itier et son évolution’, Medievalia et humanistica, xiv (1962), 47–54
M. Fassler: ‘The Office of the Cantor in Early Western Monastic Rules and Customaries: a Preliminary Investigation’, EMH, v (1985) 29–51
M. Fassler: Gothic Song (Cambridge, 1993), 110–13
SARAH FULLER